The Acolyte was good, actually

2024-07-17, revised 2024-08-20 8-minute read

This was a good show.

There is very little that you can do to make me feel that disagreeing with that is justified.

20 August: Looks like Disney cancelled the show. I’m not surprised, but I am disappointed. They tried something new, and people didn’t give it enough of a chance. Of course the show has its problems, but I want to see more gosh dang Star Wars that isn’t just filler, because we’ve exhausted everything that isn’t. Almost everything made is just an addendum atop Star Wars. I want something fresh. I’m ashamed that Disney didn’t have the balls to ignore the people who considered it in such low regard.

The slow pacing and killing off of the interesting characters were contributory to the mood of the show. I loved the side characters, probably too much because I’m starved for new interesting people, so when they were killed off so easily it hit. It hurt. I felt the way Sol would have.

As for the pacing, I found it to be in line with the way that The Stranger acted—meticulously. He didn’t, for the most part, go around killing people in epic space battles, so having so much action when that’s not what the show is about makes sense. You can hate the show for its lack of action, but then go watch Game of Thrones.¹

I have not seen Game of Thrones.

I choose not to comment on alleged racism.

To preface, I am not a “Star Wars fan”, but I do enjoy the series. If I was ever so slightly more inclined, I’d read the novels, because I love the franchise’s ideas. Revenge of the Sith is my favorite installment of the Skywalker saga.

Seeing the Visions series, I realized that, since Star Wars was overall my first foray into the sci-fi world, it’s very hard for me to come up with anything that doesn’t at least feel like Star Wars when trying to be creative in the genre. Hell, No Man’s Sky has a myriad of Star Wars-seeming ships. My problem with this is that Star Wars has so much unexplored potential on the screen.

Unlike the Marvel franchise, in which you can just about explore their world à la carte (I mostly only watch Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man), Star Wars has:

10 movies in the span of literally just the lives of a father and his son
- Clone Wars and Bad Batch, which are just 90 more hours of the second movie
- Rouge One was great but its purpose was also filler for the fourth
Andor
The Mandalorian
Rebels
- I’ll be a quibbler and say this doesn’t count because of how much an investment it is, and: it’s animated.
- Ahsoka
  - Being real here, this was a good show. A lot of fun to look at.

Resistance had brilliant visuals but was so ridiculously self-contained that it didn’t know where it wanted to go. It amounted to a bucket of unused Star Wars paint. Solo doesn’t count for anything here, because I already forgot every single frame of the movie. That is really hard to do. I remember nothing from watching it.

There are NO other ways I can get a fix of incredible cinematography coupled with a real commitment to seeing what the boundaries of this broad franchise can hold, because Lucasfilm owns the copyright for the franchise, and that will only expire after I have.

Except that’s what The Acolyte is.

The choreography, novelty, and most importantly, the lore, are what make the show so fun to watch for someone like me. It’s a look into the High Republic, which has never before been on screen in live action. It’s a possibility to finally extend into the space that I want to see more of.

Now, why does this show, which I enjoyed so dearly, have such incredibly disrespectful takes and reviews?

People don’t want that. And I can’t understand why.

Star Wars does not have enough content worth watching, and this is finally something new. This show has, after 19 long years, created a canonical image of Darth Plagueis the Wise. Is it more interesting to just watch Palpatine’s master plan unfold in every last Skywalker movie? The main trilogy could’ve been called “Darth Sidious’ Dope Dark Dominion” just as well. Let me make this clear:

WE FINALLY HAVE CHARACTERS WITH DUALITY. How in hell is this a bad thing? That’s what made Anakin so interesting. People are flawed, and that’s the entire point of the franchise and use of the force by people. It’s impossible to miss this, the show just yells “DUALITY!” at every possible corner, almost to the point of annoying me. The Jedi aren’t impenetrable. They weren’t: they died out. Luke made this clear in the sequels.

We finally have an official new collection of Sith Lords that isn’t the frankly boring Grand Inquisitor.

We finally have an official look at original Jedi history that isn’t a children’s show.

We have more new characters with unique power whose last name isn’t Skywalker or Palpatine.

These are good things. I’ve seen enough of the Clone Wars and the Empire. It’s time for something else.

What these reviews are looking at is either the production itself (and obviously not after watching the show, with the best effects that the franchise has yet seen) or at something regarding the character depth.

Is it fair to despise a show that you don’t like the idea of? Is that worth the time? You can understand that none of that is important, right? It’s physically not possible to continue creating content around the Skywalkers that people actually want to watch, otherwise the late sequels and (to a slightly lesser extent) prequels wouldn’t also have had such bad reception when they aired for the first time. This is just how it is now. If you loved the original three movies more than anything, you’ll always be disappointed that you’re not watching them. Might I recommend, instead of watching new media, to just rewatch those original three? You may outwear your previous love of them. They’re really not that good and exceptionally lack depth, which is oft cited as the problem with the new material.

Please appreciate the people at Disney. Most share your same love for the franchise. Whether you like the show or not, it doesn’t take that much to be honest about it. If you didn’t watch it, don’t act like you did, and don’t act like you didn’t predispose yourself to hating it.

Also, critizing the show’s dialogue is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Bcuz neerly every singel godam one of the reveiws that do as such on IMDb have wors controll o’er the grammer and controll over Engligh than a newborn chiled . You don’t know the first thing about dialogue.

It seems that for franchises whose most vocal following is primarily babies, I prefer listening to the critics who have some idea of what they’re talking about instead of a bunch of degenerates who think that people being creative is an insult to George Lucas. George Lucas does not care.

Do fans have the appetite for yet another Star Wars spinoff only fleetingly connected to the galaxy they know? from The San Francisco Chronicle continues echoing in my mind. The answer is that they don’t. I’ll point out that Andor probably only worked because it knew what it wanted to be. It was obvious that people hated the Empire, so why not a story about how one joins the rebellion?

Okay, but here’s the thing about The Acolyte: the point is that we’re looking at Osha and Mae learn who they are. They don’t know, and have a lot of conflict with their emotions. That is the point. That. is what the show is exploring.

I am extremely excited for Taika Waititi’s potential influence on future films, though I say this tentatively, because putting so much confidence in a movie and crew that we know so little about is fundamentally a bad idea. Maybe those of you that left fake reviews should learn this in both directions.

8/10